You knew it was coming. As soon as some teams started dropping games, fans would turn on their coaches. And that’s exactly what has happened in this month’s SEC Country Coaches Approval rating poll.

Prior to this month, the lowest approval rating was a 51.7. In September alone, four coaches had a ranking lower than 35. It’s also worth noting that a majority of these results were cast before last weekend’s games, meaning that the ratings of Ed Orgeron and Butch Jones ratings are lower than they currently are.

Bret Bielema, Barry Odom, Gus Malzahn and Jim McElwain all saw 30-point drops in their ratings. Kevin Sumlin just missed joining them, as he had a 26-point drop. For all of those coaches listed, September was the lowest month of their approval rating.

On a positive side, Kirby Smart, Will Muschamp and Derek Mason all posted new ratings highs, while Nick Saban and Dan Mullen stayed in the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in the conference, respectively.

As teams begin to move into conference play, and the losses begin to pile up — no SEC team other than Missouri has more than one loss as of this writing — the gap between those coaches secure in their jobs and those on the mythical hot seat should only grow.

About the numbers

The SEC Country approval rating poll is designed to give an indication of fan happiness over a period of time.

Our formula is based on the percentage of respondents who select each answer. We multiply that percentage by the following factors: 1 (strongly approve), 0.67 (approve), 0.33 (disapprove) and 0.0 (strongly disapprove). In other words, if 50 percent of respondents select “strongly approve” and 50 percent select “approve,” the formula would be (50 x 1) + (50 x 0.67) = 83.5% approval rating.